Six weeks later.
County cemetery, unmarked section.
Plot 117.
Exhumation.
DNA comparison took fourteen days.
The day the results came back, Preacher drank at the clubhouse until sunrise and carved Dad’s name back onto the wall, stroke by stroke.
Jack “Compass” Mason.
Original Seven.
Road Captain.
Underneath, he chiseled one line:
Compass never lost his way.
Mom pleaded guilty.
Obstruction, perjury, fraud. Multiple counts. Prosecutors asked for twelve years.
Victor was indicted by a grand jury. The brake line went to the state lab. The cut mark matched an old cutter found in his toolbox. Little D testified that at two in the morning the night it happened, he saw Victor’s pickup leaving the alley behind the repair shop.
First-degree murder, plus embezzlement and falsification o
